Desert Strike

When you pause Desert Strike, a map showing the entire current level, along with all the important stats of the Apache, comes up. Even with all of these great statistics that are available for viewing, you'll need to be looking at the map the majority of the time. The map tells you how many of each kind of weapon you have left, how much fuel is swishing around in the tank, your current armor supply, how many people you've picked up, how many lives you have left, and your current score.

As you probably figured, there are many items you can pick up and use in each level. There are fuel crates, ammo crates, armor repairs, an item that makes your ladder go up and down faster, and the very hard to find extra lives. To pick up an item, you just have to fly over and come to a halt right above any item. A ladder automatically drops down from your helicopter to steal the ground-ridden prize. You can also pick up people, whether it's an MIA, a prisoner, or even an enemy on the run. The helicopter can hold up to six extra passengers at a time. At any time, you can head over to a landing zone (represented by a white X on the ground) in order to drop the people off.

Don't let the fact that Desert Strike only has four levels scare you off. All four of the levels are huge, and they have several challenging and fun objectives to complete. Even if you're not super crazy about games in which you control an aircraft or games about war, give Desert Strike a chance.